Donald Trump: Is this Birther worth the baggage for Romney?

There’s no sane political reason for Mitt Romney to be pal-ing around with Donald Trump — who is hosting a fundraiser for him today in Vegas. And he’s the star of the “Dine with The Donald” money-raiser for Mitt.

What’s the point? Yes, we know The Donald will bring in cash. But Romney and the super PACs that support Mitt will have no trouble raising enough coin to compete. But is it worth all the baggage that Trump brings? Trump doesn’t bring a lot of votes.

Ask the polls: 48 percent of the respondents to an ABC News/Washington Post poll in December had an unfavorable impression of Trump. Several polls have found that Trump’s endorsement to be largely meaningless. A Fox News January poll showed that most of the respondents felt that Trump’s endorsement would be make no difference who they would vote for.

The negatives? It’s largely about birther thing. Trump hasn’t budged on his doubts that President Obama was born in the U.S. despite NUMEROUS nonpartisan debunkings of that idea. His latest riff, as told to The Daily Beast, is that Obama allegedly told a literary agent two decades ago that he was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia. The agent has since backed off, saying it was a fact-checking error on her part.

As conservative bow-tie wearer George Will sniffed the other day, Trump is a “bloviating ignoramus” who provides “redundant evidence that if your net worth is high enough, your IQ can be very low and you can still intrude into American politics.”

Ordinarily, we’d insert an “Ouch!” here, but if you get beatdown from a bowtie-wearer, we’ll amend that to, “Ouchy!”

For Mitt, ever the number-crunching consultant, it’s all about the numbers:

“You know I don’t agree with all the people who support me and my guess is they don’t all agree with everything I believe in,” Romney said Monday. “But I need to get 50.1 percent or more and I”m appreciative to have the help of a lot of good people.”

Here’s The Donald on CNBC this very morning:

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